How DevOps Is Transforming The Landscape Of Online Learning

KUALA LUMPUR, 16.6.2021 – Recently, DevOps has grown to be recognized for its potential in innovating higher education.  

A combination of the terms ‘development’ and ‘operations’, DevOps signifies a collaboration between two departments to bridge the gap of the tasks performed by the development and IT teams in an organization.  

This includes the process of automating and integrating the process so that the teams can work together for constant collaboration and improvement.  

At its very core, DevOps is a philosophy that represents building trust and teamwork. While it does not function as a piece of technology by itself, it uses common methodologies, such as continuous integration, incident management systems, and collaboration platforms.  

The DevOps lifecycle consists of 6 phases that represents the processes and tools needed for development. Below is a graphic highlighting each phase that is used to plan, build, operate, and monitor feedback through a continuous loop.

Source: www.atlassian.com

As DevOps has started to find a stable footing in the industry, academic institutions have begun to notice the benefits of DevOps in providing a platform for teaching. Not only has it proven useful to teach Computer Science, but the 6-phase lifecycle has extended into classrooms to teach students how to operate and manage through the configuring stages. 

For example, students can create private projects where they give confidential feedback via comments under Continuous Feedback. The issues found are used to outline students’ individual assignments and submitted as their personal projects. Continuous Integration (CI) can be used to test code, fact-check, and grade test answers. Hence, each element of the DevOps lifecycle can be applied to the course structure, effectively streamlining the teaching and learning process.

GitLab’s education survey reported that more than 800 of its education program members have adopted the methodology into other academic disciplines, such as Engineering, Social Science, and Medical. This has allowed cross-campus collaboration between students, faculty, and IT professionals, solidifying the adoption of DevOps as an educational tool. 

The increased collaboration is proving to be advantageous for virtual learning as institutions are moving to online courses. Students are also able to learn remotely without sacrificing the social aspect that makes the collaborative environment of a classroom.  

The faculty have their share of benefits as well. DevOps allows them to assess and grade tests in real-time by running through the Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Deployment (CD) pipelines. Continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) are a set of operating principles that allow development teams to deliver code changes in a more frequent and reliable manner.  

The data can then be used to generate reports to improve course design and student retention. 

This can be seen through an article published by the University of Manchester stating how they used DevOps to “find patterns and evaluation metrics that can be used to improve the course content and reflect on the most common issues the students are facing.” 

As such, the benefits of DevOps for both student and faculty are clear. As more universities are integrating DevOps into their education system, we can expect to see it expand and transform the landscape of higher education to new heights.